I lie in bed moving around trying to find a place more comfortable than the last cold uncomfortable sweaty spot. My eyes are drooling and I drift sleepish off and on in a slow nauseous slump. Nose raw from wiping runs thick snot across my parched lips. Last night I woke up lying in a sticky drying pool of my own diarrhea. I’m losing water faster than I can take it in. My heart labors fast and kitty skittish hoping to get some OC soon because everything, each and every cell in my entire body is confused, unknowing of what to do. I’m thirsty and not hungry but there’s simply no energy to get out of my filth encrusted bed to go to the next room and get something to drink. I know I’ll wait for the sweats to run all greasy again to get my weary off enough to lie in the tub and run some water. I stopped following doctor’s orders three days ago and if you’ve never kicked, if you never done the cold cold turkey then you just won’t get it. I’m a medical junky, a friend to the drug companies. Paying my $300.00 a month for the privlege of modern medical care for 90 20mg tablets of everybody’s current fad drug. When you see the stars and radio commentators get down from their gear know that they go to a nice clean clinic and get put into a slumber for two weeks as the nice staff cleans and washes them, changing their sheets every time something happens. when they wake up they’ll be a bit woozy. A little worse for wear but they won’t have to diminish their rich privlege by doing what I and thousands of other do to get clean, they are doing the same dance I do, with better care. Poor folk don’t get care and seeing’s how only %1 of anybody in this country is rich likely is that if you’re reading this you ain’t. My pills can be converted on the street to about $1800.00 but I won’t do it. I am what is called a “compliant ethical patient” and follow their directions. You are simply going to think I am crazy but I followed the doctor’s orders up to now, but now only ‘cuz I really need to find out if I need the drug anymore and there’s no way to determine where I am unless I turkey and see. I’ve done this twice before and both times realized after a month off that I am still in pain so know I’m crazy because I’m doing something over and over with the same stupid result. But I still got damn fool hope.
When you first get clean the pain returns way bad, unsettling and fierce but if you are mad back at it, if you are as mad as I am about drug companies and hospitals you grit it and get it. You wait weeks and then months until there’s no other chance that it’ll go away, chronic pain people understand, you lose appetite, motivation and depression eats away quiet at why you should stay around because each day is exactly as the last and there’s no joy in anything. Most folk who take narcotics for chronic pain become what is called “medically dependant” on the substance. When we kick it’s said by the drug companies to be much easier because we didn’t get to feeling good when we take it, at best we feel ok. Most folk who take it for fun get high, get in high gear over it. They’ll do the stupidest things to get more, increasing their dose, chasing the now I’m in high gear edge it gives ‘em hoping to just get another chance to grab the tail of the bird that flys ‘em so high. They show every now and then on the news and I just do not understand. Narcotic make me nauseous and give me a headache but it’s better than the pain. Even though 80mg can kill a newbie, folks there is no maximum dose. Some well adapted folk can take thousands of milligrams and in their pain or on their gear they either need or seek more. But I’m simply a fool who had a ” negative outcome” gut operation with a whole passel of first time surgeons (tell ya that story later) at the VA so called hospital. Yeah, I’m a “lucky” peacetime vet. I ended up on the dole with Uncle Sugar paying the bill with money I gave him for working near 30 years and the State covering the the rest of my so called needs. Except when I die the State gets first cut at all my leavings. They’ll come into my bedroom and get everything of value and sell it to pay off their kindness. Do you ever scratch your head and wonder why all those people are on the dole? Why so many well intended hard working folk lose their means to work then lose everything? You know them, they’re the people the right wing calls “lazy” or the left wing calls “underemployed.” What kind of vile inhumane system does this? Yours does, you own this one all by yourself. Our sanctimonious government has funded this mess for as long as you’ve been alive. And as long as the drug companies and their friends the insurance companies and politicians have their way you’ll keep me here in this pool of shit hoping for a medication that will work, something that will make my pain go away without causing me to be so damn sick. Excuse me, I’m going to barf again, I’ll be back… if I remember to, did I tell you that turkey screws up memory?
